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Re: Homework (Was Measure of student understanding)



But Hugh's answer avoids the question asked by both Rich and
myself. What
is the predictive value of the conceptual tests?
[edit]
I'm a bit confused: is there a way to identify the predictive value of any
instructional methodology?

Robert Cohen; rcohen@po-box.esu.edu; http://www.esu.edu/~bbq

Yes, there is. Tony (Anton) Lawson et. al. just published a piece in the
Journal of College Science Teaching on exactly this; my wife Kathleen Falconer
is directly and I am peripherally involved in their work. We have been
evaluating the presence or absence of "reformed teaching" in science and math
educational settings, and this overlaps "instructional methodology" an awful
lot. We evaluate "reformed teaching" using a 100-point observation-based
scale called RTOP, and correlated RTOP scores with various measures of
conceptual gain, computational ability, gains in understanding the nature of
science etc. What those latter instruments predict may be under debate here,
but RTOP scores _strongly_ correlate to gains on these instruments.

Shameless plug here: KF and I are conducting an RTOP workshop (W29) at the
AAPT meeting in ID this summer. Copies of the RTOP can be found at:
http://purcell.phy.nau.edu/AZTEC/RTOP_full/PDF/
and a beta website discussing and demonstrating RTOP use is available at
http://purcell.phy.nau.edu/AZTEC/RTOP
Be aware this last website describes instructional situations deliberately
edited and manipulated for certain RTOP scores in an effort to teach use of
the instrument. Good and (in my opinion) bad instruction are both deliberately
shown here, togther with their RTOP assessments.

Dan M

Lawson, A., Benford, R., Bloom, I., Carlson, M., Falconer, K., Hestenes, D.,
Judson, E., Piburn, M., Sawada, D., Turley, J. & Wyckoff, S. (2002).
Evaluating college science and mathematics instruction: A reform effort
that improves teaching skills, Journal of College Science Teaching,
31 (6) 388-393.

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ Univ
danmac@nau.edu http://purcell.phy.nau.edu PHYS-L list owner